Enough With Fall, What About Now? Liberty, 10 Corso Como, Has The Answer

Tonight, Liberty, the storied London emporium on Regent Street, threw a party for its collaboration with Milan boutique/fashion epicenter/site of the holy pilgrimage, 10 Corso Como, in Milan. The cause of the celebration was the reworking of the iconic Ianthe print by artist Kris Ruhs, who was commissioned by Carla Sozzani to take its somewhat Arts and Crafts meets Art Nouveau look and reimagine it. Ruhs turned it into a desaturated twenty-first-century graphic motif ever so slightly touched by four different colors, and then Liberty used it for shirts (with matching ties!), silk scarves, bikinis, sun hats, and cotton totes. This updated version will work brilliantly in the months ahead because it is the very antithesis of a sunny print and, really, that’s the whole point; it’s much more cool to wear something darkly surprising in the bright light of summer than the obvious and the expected. Liberty CEO Geoffroy de La Bourdonnaye is thrilled the two iconic stores got to work together. Not just because he has been an admirer of Sozzani for years, but because the collaboration—just like the store’s recent hook ups with Grayson Perry or Hermès—made sense because they are such a complementary fit. “Liberty, like 10 Corso Como, has always worked with designers and artists,” he says. “There is a sense we both share an avant-garde raison d’etre.” As for Sozzani, she was happy to take the project on because it brought back happy memories of the London store. “You know, I am a girl and of the sixties and seventies,” she says. “When I visited here, I would only go to two places: Biba—and Liberty.” And it helped that the print being reworked was the Ianthe. “You don’t really want to do a true flower print,” Sozzani says, laughing. “It would be hard to come up with a new one. Liberty already made them all.”